Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are strengthening immigration enforcement in prisons as the Trump administration is looking for more ways to evacuate more immigrants from sanctuary cities.
We atty. Bill Essayli announced this week that a pilot program called Operation Guardian Angels is intended to “neutralize” the shelter law. The office identified people with criminal records of deportation and accused them of illegally re-entering the United States, a federal crime.
The strategy focused federal resources on shelter rules, hindering the work of immigration agents-county and state jails.
“Under the Trump administration, we will not allow shelter jurisdictions to prevent the safety of the American people.”
State officials said they have worked with federal officials on immigration to crimes.
“While the Trump administration may try to blame California for its desperate desire to achieve its misleading, inhumane mass deportation agenda, immigration enforcement has been and has been the job of the federal government,” a California spokesman said. General Rob Bonta.
Under Obama and the Second Shrub Administration, the practice of prosecuting individuals for illegal entry has been widely employed, but has been forgotten in recent years. Experts say the recovery could increase the number of arrests of immigrants in the area.
Essayli, a former state legislator and Lebanese immigrant son, was appointed last month. He told Fox News that he created a dedicated federal official to comb through a database to identify deported immigrants. New efforts can incur dozens of expenses per week.
The government is frustrated by California’s policy, which prohibits local law enforcement from arresting someone simply for deportation orders, or imprisoning someone in prison so that immigration agents can detain them.
Immigration officials have relied on local police to help them enforce the law in the past decade, but over the past decade, the protection of immigration has increased in California and other states. The state has shrunk its involvement in immigration enforcement in streets and prisons, eventually ending a 287 (g) agreement in 2018 law that allows local jailers to screen for criminal suspects’ violations.
Immigration activists believe that these protocols erode trust with the community and punish immigrants with minor violations.
The Trump administration has actively promoted the resumption of such programs nationwide as it tries to treat its promise of mass deportation.
“The days of giving criminally illegal foreigners a free pass are over,” Eseyley said in a statement. “While California may currently ignore detainees, it cannot ignore federal arrest warrants.”
There is still a lot of cooperation between state and federal immigration authorities.
Under state law, California prison officials can transfer any inmate to immigration detention centers, but they do have to give the person written notice. Police can notify immigration agents if someone has certain beliefs. These include any felony that leads to a state prison, most other felony recorded over the past 15 years, and some senior misdemeanors in the past five years.
President Trump portrays sanctuary cities as more dangerous, with much of his immigration agenda centering on the removal of criminals. Experts say that speech does not match reality.
“The basic assumption is widespread immigration crime,” said Charis Kubrin, a criminology professor at UC Irving. Her research and other studies have shown that there is no link between the status of the sanctuary and crime.
“Immigration will not be a crime higher than local births, and immigration to a certain area will not lead to an increase in crime,” she said.
Essayli’s office said his office would file charges and seek a warrant so federal agents could “detain as many defendants as possible from state prisons.”
In 2023 and 2024, federal prosecutors in central California (seven counties including Los Angeles) collected a total of 17 people who illegally re-entered after their dismissal.
Between January 20 and May 1, the office accused 347 people of illegal reentry. Five days before the program began on May 10, 13 people have been arrested, which is actually slower than the previous three months.
But even if the numbers accelerate, the program may face a barrier created by its success, as the higher the number of prosecutions.
“At the end of the day, they will have … competency issues,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior researcher at the Institute for Immigration Policy.
Staff writer Andrea Castillo contributed to the story.
